Started out making games in high school using escape codes to place text on a PDP-11 smart terminal. A veteran developer, I have been at the front edge of technology, including extremely early work on Macintosh computers, networked games, early consoles, Direct3D, and have stayed independent for most of my career. I worked as a contractor, an employee and have even run my own company (a few times). My titles have included Programmer, Lead Programmer, Game Designer, and Game Director for companies including Activision, Westwood Studios, EA, Interplay, THQ, Ubisoft and Sony. In early 2011 I co-founded Game Mechanics.

It is easy to criticize. It is hard to do. I have criticized the gatekeepers at the game stores for heading towards a day when all games will have to pass a formula before getting approved. Now I am proposing an alternative.

The game industry is again a gated community. Stores require yes votes from the public or approval from a junior business development specialist. This all leads to games only getting through who fit through their hole. Hence games all start to look alike.

For many of us, the reason we started our game company was so we could make the decisions rather than some accountant who never played a computer game. But we need to not ignore the business side in the same way the accountant ignored the game side.

Some ideas that look really good on paper do not play out in the real world. Guaranteed success is not necessarily guaranteed. Or success. I do a case study so we can all potentially learn from my mistake.

The people who have played the game know it will be a success. It was not a pattern game by any means. The controls still are unique. No game has duplicated them. It truly is fun even now. Basically it is timeless. That is why I chose to do it. ...

Many junior programmers have no idea how to finish a game. You can hire 50 junior programmers and never finish or two senior programmers and finish in six months. You need experience to close out a project or you get caught up in feature creep. Or they write unsupportable code ...

There is no question that PC games have a lot more upside potential. We have made more in Early Access and a Kickstarter campaign than you did for your whole game. I assume our after release numbers will be even better. r n r nThanks for this. I have been ...

When Microsoft bought them they dropped support for Unityscript and Boo. If you use either of those languages you are out of luck even if you paid for it before it was made free. It does not mention their dropping language support anywhere but in their release notes. So beware